Piano fireworks
expected
A dizzying display of piano pyrotechnics will explode through the Blaisdell Concert Hall tonight and Sunday when Vladimir Feltsman attacks Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in the Honolulu Symphony's MasterWorks series second concert for the 2003-04 season.
Japan's Tadaaki Otaka will preside at the podium as the orchestra performs the "Russian Romance" program entitled "Russian Virtuosity, Russian Rarities," featuring the Prokofiev concerto and Rachmaninoff's beloved Symphony No. 2.
"It is an extreme piece in many senses: to play, so avant-garde, intense and tragic," Feltsman said during a telephone interview from his home in upstate New York. "The symphony specifically asked me to perform this piece, and I tried to offer them something, well, a bit more vegetarian but they knew what they wanted.
Russian Romance
The Honolulu Symphony featuring guest conductor Tadaaki Otaka and pianist Vladimir FeltsmanWhere: Blaisdell Concert Hall
When: 8 p.m. today and 4 p.m. Sunday
Tickets: $16, $28, $33, $44, $59
Call: 792-2000, or Ticketmaster at 877-750-4400Honolulu Symphony
Vladimir Feltsman left Russia for the United States in 1987.
"My God, the piece is wild and haunting -- the very most difficult piano concerto in the repertoire. It's demanding, both physiologically and psychically, and it is seldom performed because it's so excruciating to perform."
The piece is also rarely performed because it requires more rehearsal time than usual, he said.
"It is not a problem for me," Feltsman said. "The problem is having enough time with an orchestra, because the score is so very difficult. The orchestra must be well prepared, and the conductor must know what is going on or it's a total disaster."
The pianist must contend with the piece having no slow movements.
"It goes from difficult to more difficult to impossible," Feltsman says, then laughs. "After I am done, I need a half-hour to drink lots of water to recuperate."
According to Feltsman, Prokofiev met Maximilian Shmitgoff in 1909 while both were at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and they became close friends. But in April 1913, Shmitgoff shot himself. Just before doing so, he wrote Prokofiev a suicide note that begins, "Dear Seryozha, I'm writing to tell you the latest news -- I have shot myself in the head."
Prokofiev dedicated his prodigious Second Piano Concerto, and three other pieces, to his friend's memory.
FELTSMAN WAS born decades later in Moscow in the former Soviet Union in 1952. He made his concert debut with the Moscow Philharmonic at age 11, and six years later entered the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory of Music where he studied piano with Jacob Flier.
Flier was a student of Konstantin Igumnov, who in turn taught legendary Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter, considered one of the 20th century's greatest keyboard artists.
Feltsman's training extended to the Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) conservatories where he studied conducting as well as piano. By 1971 he had won the Grand Prix at the Marguerite Long International Piano Competition in Paris and, as a result, was able to visit outside the Soviet Union during concert tours through Europe and Japan.
Asked why he became a musician, Feltsman's answer is curt and stern.
"It had to happen. Call it destiny," he says.
What does that mean?
"That's my answer," he replied sharply.
These experiences, combined with his longing for freedom of expression, motivated him to apply for an exit visa to leave the Soviet Union in 1979. Soviet authorities immediately banned him from performing in public.
"My professional years in Russia were very short because I applied for the exit visa," he says. "Then there were eight years of nothing. I did play in some far-out villages and factories.
"It was not a very fun time, but perhaps a blessing in disguise because I had a lot of time to learn a new repertoire."
HONOLULU SYMPHONY
Vladimir Feltsman left Russia for the United States in 1987.
AFTER EIGHT YEARS of virtual artistic exile within the Soviet Union, he was finally allowed to leave thanks, he says, to the efforts of President Ronald Reagan. He arrived in the United States in 1987 and made his U.S. debut at the White House. His Carnegie Hall debut followed.
Feltsman has since recorded a broad range of music, including much of J.S. Bach's keyboard repertoire; a number of Beethoven's major piano sonatas; the complete Nocturnes and Preludes of Chopin; Liszt's B Minor Sonata and other virtuosic works; Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 and his "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini"; Tchaikovsky's Piano Concertos No. 1 and 3; Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1 as well as the bone-cracking No. 2; and much more. In addition, he continues to perform as a guest soloist with nearly every leading orchestra in America, Europe and Asia.
"I love music because it's a sharing, enriching people who are listening, uplifting. What I do not like is the travel and too much socializing."
Now Feltsman says teaching is an essential part of his life, and he is aware of the value of preserving the great Russian piano tradition, with its exacting technique and what he terms its "unmatched emotional intensity."
In addition to teaching piano at the Mannes School of Music in New York, he holds the Distinguished Chair of Professor of Piano at State University of New York-New Paltz. He is also the founder and artistic director of the International Festival-Institute of Piano Summer at New Paltz, a month-long training program for advanced piano students that attracts the creme de la creme of musicians worldwide.
Reminded about reviews in which critics lauded his talent while describing him as "moody" and "prickly," Feltsman laughs.
"All of it is nonsense," he says. "And whatever I tell you now is nonsense, and what you write about me, of course, will be nonsense.
"I stopped caring what critics said about me more than 10 years ago because it's totally irrelevant."
What counts, he says, is doing well at the box office and being good enough for the orchestra.
"A good or bad critic is never the reason you are invited or not invited to play, and I am still being invited, so I couldn't care less," he said.
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